This is pretty scary stuff – members of an evangelical church (the New Life Baptist Church) visited Ainderby Steeple primary school, which is a Church of England school, for some sort of bizarre cultish event known as ‘Kidzone Roadshow’. It’s reported that at least one child has been pretty seriously disturbed by the aggressive tosh being pushed by the evangelicals and, as in the case of the Exeter school, his parent got very little helpful response from the school’s head teacher when she complained:

[…] she complained to headteacher Fiona Sharp. She claims that when she confronted Miss Sharp over ­making pupils eat their ‘apologies to God’, written on rice paper, she was told: ‘That is what we do.’

Appallingly it seems that this isn’t a solitary example of such abuse of vulnerable children: the child was transferred to another school only to find the same religious crazies have a foothold there too.

Indeed, this may be quite widespread – the National Secular Society says it’s received several similar reports (Evangelical group made children “eat their sins”). The vulnerability of faith schools to incursions from religious extremists seeking to indoctrinate children at an impressionable age is clear, and one further argument for the elimination of faith schools.